Question An issue about custom editor in shadergraph.

I'm making a rendering work flow base on ShaderGraph.

Due to unsupported custom editor in shader graph,the material inspector become unfriendly while writing complex shader with lot of exposed properties.And,I can't see anyone talk about it.

Shader Graph was designed for zero coding.I think create a custom editor C# script and indicate the script's location in source code ("CustomEditor "XXX.cs") is breaking the rule.

Well,so I am building a simple feature that you can add a "Drawer" Property with it's display name will be insert into the source code:


It's almost done except an issue:
When you click 'Save Asset' and only the drawer attribute was added or removed,then the material inspector will not refresh,unless restart the unity project(refresh and reimport was useless).

There are simple steps to reproduce it with unmodify package:
1.Create a shdaer graph,assign it to a new material.
2.Add a property "Boolean" and save,of course you will see a bool appear on the material inspector .
3.Open the source code "BooleanShaderProperty.cs",nagivate to function "GetPropertyBlockString()",and remove the string "[ToggleUI]".
4.Back to Unity,save the shader graph,the inspector keep toggle but not a float field,if you add a new boolean property it will show as float which is correct.

5.restart unity then both show correctly.


The way unity handle inspector update is a black box,I don't know how to solve it.

 

After some digging the 2018.4.9f1 CS source, I find a code line has highly possibility was the reason :



Return variable 'attribs' may don't get update when a shader graph property'attribute changed,but this function 'GetShaderPropertyAttributes' finally call the C++ side code,which I can't get more informations.

I guess the function has different implement for shader and shader graph,and the reason was inside.

 

The fact that this worked in anyway is terrifying. Better to do it right and submit a patch directly to Unity to get the effects that you want.

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies

 

Custom editors (the same one you use with traditional shaders) is also one of the feature of ShaderGraph Essentials. You fill in information directly in the master node as: MyNamespace.MyCustomEditorScript; and it adds the correct code to the generated shader.